Meta-Ethics

The fact that I am a committed gardener has some practical upshot or other. But what, exactly, is the upshot of the fact that I am committed to some project, person, or principle? According to a standard view, my commitment to gardening provides me with or constitutes a further reason to garden, beyond whatever reasons arise from the commitment-independent merits of gardening. I will argue that we should reject this conception of commitment’s practical upshot and its attendant psychological story involving (...) the will. According to the view I develop here, a commitment to X is a decision to take seriously the reasons to which X gives rise, and where necessary, to give those reasons an elevated place in one’s practical thinking. (shrink)

This paper considers the prospects for a green Kantian philosophy. It does so by revisiting Steven Vogel’s postnaturalist objections against Kant. Though Descartes is part of the story, Kant is a primary environmental obstacle for Vogel. Like others in environmental philosophy, Vogel criticizes Kant for his dualism, anthropocentrism, idealism, and nonconsequentialism. The present paper looks into the first two objections. It begins by reconstructing Vogel’s argument against “nature” to appreciate his claim that modern philosophy haunts contemporary environmental philosophy. After pointing (...) out difficulties with Vogel’s objections, resources in Kant are explored to assuage Vogel’s concerns regarding noumena and non-human animals. The paper concludes with a glimpse of an alternate interpretation of Kant that has the potential to respond to the remaining worries of idealism and nonconsequentialism. (shrink)

This essay defends an account of what things are assessable for reasonableness and why. On this account, something is assessable for reasonableness if and only if and because it is the functional effect of critical reasoning.

What is the source of normativity? According to Bengson, Cuneo and Shafer-Landau (2023), we can answer this question by identifying non-normative grounds of fundamental normative facts. To illustrate how this can be achieved, they argue that facts concerning essences of normative properties are non-normative facts, and such facts can be seen as non-normative grounds of fundamental normative facts. I argue that this strategy is misguided. First, explanations citing essence facts about normative properties are poor answers to the question of the (...) source of normativity. Second, it is not clear if such facts are non-normative in the relevant sense. Along the way, I address questions about what it is to be a normative fact and relate the implications of this discussion to general issues about metaphysical explanation in meta-normativity. (shrink)

Outcomes tyrannize over prevailing accounts of ethics, actions, reasons, attitudes, and social practices. The right action promotes the best outcome, the end of every action is an outcome to be promoted, reasons to act are reasons to promote outcomes, and preferences and desires rationalize actions that aim at the outcome of realizing their contents—making their contents true. The case for this tyranny turns on a related set of counterintuitive outcome-centered interpretations of deeply intuitive claims that it is always right to (...) do what’s best, that every action brings about an outcome, and that the good is prior to the right. The ethical case for consequentialism elides the distinction between these claims in each case, allowing the counter-intuitive interpretations to hijack the plausibility of the intuitively plausible counterparts. This ethical hijacking has succeeded in large part because a conflation between two different senses of bringing about, and an assumption that all non-deontic value rationales for action are outcome-centered, are thoroughly entrenched at the non-ethical level as well. The “neutral” framework of reasons, actions, and attitudes within which we frame the ethical debate begs the question in favor of a consequentialist resolution of the debate, providing a non-ethical argument for outcome-centered ethics. To expose this conflation and this unwarranted assumption, then, is to undermine the case for these default outcome-centered accounts of reasons, actions, and attitudes as well, and in doing so to expose a subtle but pernicious shift from looking directly at oneself, one’s reasons, the values they reflect, one’s actions, and the practices in which one is involved, to looking at these same things as if in a fun house mirror—the recognizable features are there, but subtly, profoundly distorted, often beyond recognition. (shrink)

This is a critical notice of Conor McHugh and Jonathan Way's <i>Getting Things Right<\i> (2022, OUP).

We respond to useful comments by Luciana Ceri, Eugenio Lecaldano and Filippo Magni on our new translation of Moore's Principia Ethica with the unpublished 1922 Preface.

The aim of this dissertation is to develop an account of Gilles Deleuze’s philosophical project as a departure from ontology and ontological thinking. Ontology can be broadly understood as the study of being or the study of the meaning of being. Traditional ontology examines the nature of being while more contemporary philosophy often understands being itself as becoming or a process. In this respect, Deleuze has often been interpreted as a process or differential ontologist. This project departs from that interpretation (...) by arguing for a non-ontological Deleuze. The dissertation is broken into three papers where each presents a different account of what I call the non-ontological Deleuze through his work on the major pre-Kantian modern philosophers: David Hume, Benedict Spinoza, and Gottfried Leibniz. Each paper then uses the non-ontological Deleuze to engage with a related movement in post-Deleuzian Continental Philosophy. The first paper focuses on Deleuze’s early work on Hume to argue for a re-reading of the history of modern philosophy with a basis in transcendental empiricism rather than Kantian transcendental idealism. This paper uses Deleuze’s reading of Hume to respond to and critique the Speculative Realist movement’s charge that post-Kantian philosophy suffers from what they call correlationism. The second paper uses Deleuze’s work on Spinoza to argue for what the former calls ethology as a replacement for ontology. The claim here is that we should think of things in terms of what they do rather than what they are: in terms of their motion and affects rather than their being. There I contrast my reading of Deleuze’s Spinoza with those thinkers who have recently used that work to develop what is often referred to as New Materialism. The final paper argues that understanding things in terms of what they can do requires a nomadology, which is Deleuze’s play on Leibniz’s monadology. This paper uses Deleuze’s nomadology to create a dialogue with the emerging literature on Critical Posthumanism and subjectivity that has been influenced by Deleuze to suggest that posthumanist subjectivity should be understood in non-ontological terms. (shrink)

In the following paper I develop an account of Gilles Deleuze’s ethics through his work on Spinoza, which he contrasts with morality, to argue that an ethical response to the COVID-19 pandemic should resist the moralizing of the New Normal and instead have an immanent focus on what is happening to us. In the first part of the paper I detail the novel approach to ethics as ethology that Deleuze works out most explicitly in Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. In the second (...) part I show exactly how Deleuze contrasts ethics from morality and moral thinking before showing the relation of ethics to morality in relation to the New Normal and contrast the Deleuzian ethical perspective from other ethical philosophical accounts that I claim are indicative a moral approach to the New Normal. I conclude by arguing that the prevalence of the New Normal amidst COVID-19 represents a triumph of what Spinoza calls the sad passions and suggest Deleuze’s ethics might be a way to reject those sad passions. (shrink)

Malaysia faces a critical shortage of organ donors, with Muslims participating at lower rates compared to other ethnoreligious groups. This study investigates the sociocultural and religious factors shaping Muslim attitudes towards organ donation. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, a survey conducted in Kuala Lumpur assessed Muslims’ willingness to donate organs, while an interview with the Head of the National Transplant Resource Centre explored cultural and religious influences. Findings reveal significant barriers, including misconceptions that organ donation is self-harm, concerns about (...) missing organs on Judgement Day, and beliefs regarding the sanctity of the human body in Islam. The study suggests that raising awareness through culturally sensitive campaigns, aligned with Sharīʿah principles, could address these concerns. This could potentially increase the number of Muslim organ donors, thus supporting the Sharīʿah goal of preserving life. (shrink)

Thomas Schmidt argues that a widely held combination of views about reasons and ought—the Balancing View of Ought and the claim that reasons against Q are reasons for not-Q—is extensionally adequate only if it is complemented by two principles of reasons transmission. In this paper I present three problems for Schmidt’s package of views and two problems for his transmission principles considered in isolation. I then defend a rival package of views—a version of the Balancing View and the claim that (...) reasons against Q are reasons that bear on Q with negative weight—that avoids these problems and secures extensional adequacy without Schmidt’s principles. I conclude that friends of the Balancing View should prefer my package of views. (shrink)

Dobzhansky, Theodosius; Ruse, Michael; Pigliucci, Massimo; Teehan, John. Ética e evolução. Tradução de Ediovani Antônio Gaboardi, Iago Pereira da Silva, Maíra Bittencourt, Maria Irene Baggio, Matheus Adriano Ferreira Coelho, Miécimo Ribeiro Moreira Júnior, Paulo Marcos da Silva, Walter Valdevino Oliveira Silva. Editora do PPGFil-UFRRJ & Associação Brasileira de Filosofia e História da Biologia – ABFHIB, 2024. ISBN 978-65-01-19441-7 -/- Este livro digital apresenta a tradução de uma coletânea de artigos que exploram a interseção entre ética e evolução, com o objetivo (...) de mostrar como esses dois domínios se entrelaçam e se influenciam. Cada artigo representa uma contribuição importante para o debate contemporâneo sobre a ética evolutiva, abordando temas que vão desde a relação entre moralidade e evolução biológica até a influência da religião, sob uma ótica evolutiva, na formação dos princípios éticos. Reunimos aqui o trabalho de quatro pensadores de destaque nessa discussão: Theodosius Dobzhansky, Michael Ruse, Massimo Pigliucci e John Teehan. -/- Os artigos traduzidos nesta coletânea foram organizados cronologicamente, permitindo que o leitor possa ter uma visão abrangente da própria complexificação, não necessariamente linear, das discussões ao longo das últimas décadas. Os artigos elegidos também mostram como, desde os anos 1970 e até os anos 2020, a relação entre evolução, moralidade e aspectos culturais é um tópico de intensa discussão entre biólogos e filósofos. Para aprofundar o contexto intelectual em que os artigos foram produzidos, as traduções são precedidas de uma breve descrição das demais contribuições de seus autores. (shrink)

In my dissertation, "The Nature of Halakha: Philosophical Investigations," I explore the metaphysics of Halakha using contemporary analytical philosophy. The central question guiding my research is: How are the natural world and the world of Halakha related, according to the underlying assumptions of Halakha? My work consists of three papers addressing the relationship between natural facts and halakhic facts. In the first paper, I propose a shift from the traditional debate between halakhic realism and nominalism to a discussion of halakhic (...) naturalism and non-naturalism. I evaluate arguments for and against various interpretations of these views, favoring a non-naturalistic perspective. In the second paper, I argue for a strong version of non-naturalism, which I term "Halakhic Occasionalism." This view suggests that God's primary involvement in the world is His responsiveness to halakhic practices. I analyze the Talmudic principle that "the mitzvot were not given to produce benefit" and its implications, using this analysis to support the occasionalist interpretation. The third paper examines the metaphysical nature of halakhic laws, focusing on the relationship between their general aspect and specific applications. I present two competing theses: Halakhic Generalism and Halakhic Particularism. I argue that the particularist position better justifies the halakhic principle that "no prohibition applies to prohibition" in cases of normative overdetermination. Throughout my dissertation, I argue that the halakhic concepts do not carve nature at its joints, indicating that the halakhic framework does not align with the natural divisions of the physical world. I explore this insight across the three papers, contributing to an understanding of the relationship between God, the natural world, and halakhic practice. My work aims to contribute to the field of philosophy of Halakha by applying analytical methods to traditional Jewish legal concepts. I also seek to bridge discussions in metaethics, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of law with halakhic thought, offering perspectives on longstanding questions in Jewish legal philosophy. I draw on sources including Talmudic literature, Jewish commentaries, and contemporary philosophical works. By engaging with traditional Jewish texts and modern analytical philosophy, I create an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the nature of Halakha. (shrink)

Duties to oneself are central to Kant's moral thought. Indeed, in his Lectures on Ethics, he claims that they “take first place, and are the most important of all” (LE: 27:341). Despite this, Kant is not clear about what they are or why they are ‘the most important.’ What is it for a duty to be owed to oneself? And in what sense do such duties ‘take first place’? I answer these questions: a duty to oneself is a self-legislated duty, (...) and they ‘take first place’ in that all ethical duties are, fundamentally, duties to oneself. Based on a close reading of Kant's “Apparent Antinomy” regarding duties to oneself in The Doctrine of Virtue §§1–3, I argue that Kant holds that (1) a duty is owed to its legislator, and (2) all duties are self-legislated. I then argue that this interpretation is further supported by Kant's understanding of the Categorical Imperative as a “principle of autonomy” in the Groundwork (G: 4:433). I conclude by offering an interpretation of the Categorical Imperative on which even though all duties are ultimately owed to oneself, there remains an important sense in which some duties are owed to others as well. (shrink)

Creators offload the construction of their artifact in that the world helps to determine the nature of their imposition in ways that can go beyond the content of their imposing activities. Extant theories of imposition fail to account for offloading by requiring match between content and product. Therefore, I develop an externalist theory that accommodates offloading by taking the imposition of mind onto world to be objectively constrained. An important kind of imposition is normativity. Focusing on personal value, what’s valuable (...) for someone is determined by what they value as good or bad for themselves. Such a subjectivist view faces the same problem as extant theories of imposition in seeming to preclude the possibility of making mistakes about value. Applying imposition externalism, I defend an artifactual approach to subjectivism such that mistakes are captured in terms of offloading. A subject’s valuing can fail to match the very value it creates. (shrink)

From Groundwork for the metaphysics of morals and Critique of practical reason, we can deduce Kant's interpretation of the concept of freedom, which has undergone a change from practical freedom to transcendental freedom, and the deduction of freedom has been perfected, the rational facts have been put forward to provide the basis of free deduction. The reason for the change is that freedom as the basis of theoretical practice is assumed and predetermined, how the cause and effect of freedom as (...) will may not be explained, and the nature of freedom is not defined clearly, the legitimacy and authority of the moral law is not established. After the transformation, the problem was solved. Although rigour raises questions about the universality of Kant’s moral law, Onora Sylvia O’Neill and others argue that Kant’s moral law is a product of virtue ethics, not a normative ethic, Kant's moral law still can instruct us in ethical life. (shrink)

John Duns Scotus (1265/6-1308) and Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) have much to say regarding the relationship between the commandments to love God and to love one’s neighbor. Their positions are so similar in places that some interpreters have suggested that Kierkegaard and Scotus agree that the command to love one’s neighbor follows necessarily from the command to love God. That is, Scotus and Kierkegaard allegedly hold that the indicative, “One’s neighbor is to be loved” is necessarily true in the same way (...) as the indicative, “God is to be loved.” For Scotus, determining the modal status of these commands involves framing imperatives as indicatives. According to Scotus, there is a distinction between natural law in the strict sense (where the truths of propositions are epistemically immediate and necessary) and the loose sense (where the truths of propositions are mediate and contingent), and the command to love God is natural law in the strict sense. However, Scotus does not posit an entailment relationship between love of God and love of neighbor, where loving one’s neighbor is necessary and epistemically immediate, and the suggestion that Scotus holds this belief seems unwarranted given textual evidence in Ordinatio III. 28 and, especially, III. 37, nn. 32-39. This paper argues that while Kierkegaard and Scotus share remarkably similar accounts of neighbor-love, Kierkegaard departs from the Scotus in some crucial respects, particularly concerning the modal status of the indicative “one’s neighbor is to be loved,” and the qualifications for a neighbor. Identifying where Kierkegaard departs from Scotus highlights the subtleties of their respective accounts of neighbor-love, and it might also supply clues regarding the trajectory of Kierkegaard’s mediated reception of the Subtle Doctor. (shrink)

Drawing on a formal model of reflexive consciousness, the author examines the causative relationship between logic, morality and conscious agency, which renders morality ‘realist’ in the sense that our actions have inescapable consequences for our capacities as agent. In addition to formulating an analytical framework for rationally solving complex moral dilemmas, the author defends the claim that the structure of sense, internalised as the logical consistency of Self-ideation with respect to other beings of the same kind, determines not only the (...) moral integrity of our conduct but the ontological integrity of the Self, and that objective morality is not an impediment to conscious agency but its optimal realisation; the essence of creative power over meaning, which is the ultimate self-interest. (shrink)

Today, there is a growing interest in the ethics of the human and social sciences, and in the discussions surrounding these topics, notions such as responsibility toward the past are often invoked. But those engaged in these discussions seldom acknowledge that there are at least two distinct logics of responsibility underlying many debates. These logics permeate a Western scholarly tradition but are seldom explicitly discussed. The two logics follow the Latin and Hebrew concepts of responsibility: spondeo and acharayut. The purpose (...) of this article is to make an ethical argument: to explain, based on the work of Emmanuel Levinas and others, what kind of ethical-existential logic of responsibility acharayut is and how it differs from and challenges other concepts of responsibility in moral philosophy and the human sciences. I am especially concerned with what this logic implies with regard to reading and writing about the past. Responsibility is not necessarily congruent with performing a scientific (historical) task or defending the (political, juridical) interests of a group of people. Instead, a “guiltless responsibility” to people of other generations points to something that I refer to as a transgenerational responsibility. I contrast this transgenerational responsibility to inherited guilt and related ideas of generational interconnectedness, which follow the logic of spondeo. Inherited guilt suggests that a responsible relation the past is to either identify with or blame a group of people in the past. Contrary to inherited guilt, a commitment to acharayut means constantly probing one’s responsibility to people of the past (for their posterity) and people of the future (as their predecessors) precisely because people of the present are not people of the past or people of the future. (shrink)

While intimately familiar, gender eludes theorizing. We argue that well-known challenges to gender’s analysis originate in a subtle ambiguity: questions about gender sometimes express questions about gender categories themselves (e.g., womanhood, manhood, and so on), while at other times expressing questions about what makes someone a member of these categories. Distinguishing these questions accentuates gender’s connections to morality, making a novel “antirealist” view of gender, or as we call it, “unrealist” view, especially natural. Gender’s relations to identity, sex, and social (...) position are illuminated along the way. Taking cues from both historical and contemporary debates in metaethics about the roles that attitudes can play in metaphysical and semantic analysis, we introduce and begin developing a comprehensive non-ameliorative framework for explicating gender’s nature and our thought and talk about it. In a slogan, on the view we defend, you belong to the gender category to which you intrinsically desire to belong. (shrink)

We articulate and defend the most central claims of contemporary Kantian moral theory. We also explain some of the most important internal disagreements in the field, contrasting two approaches to Kantian ethics: Kantian Constructivism and Kantian Realism. We connect the former to Kant’s Formula of Universal Law and the latter to his Formula of Humanity. We end by discussing applications of the Formula of Humanity in normative ethics.